There appears to be a steady narrative coming out of the punditry that Obama’s win, convincing though it was, doesn’t mean anything because Obama didn’t run on his record. He just scared people, or so the story goes. Mr. Hanson here explains it this way:
“In textbook community-organizing fashion, Obama won the election by brilliantly cobbling together factions with shrill warnings of supposed enemies everywhere. Young women were threatened by sexist Neanderthal males. Minorities were oppressed by neo-Confederate tea partiers. Greens were in danger from greedy smokestack polluters. Gays were bullied by homophobic Evangelicals. Illegal aliens were demonized by xenophobic nativists. And the 47 percent were at the mercy of the grasping 1 percent. Almost any American could fall into the category of either an Obama-aligned victim or a Romney-aligned oppressor.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/08/groundhog_day_in_america_116111.html
Of course, it makes perfect sense for the losing party to downplay the loss, particularly going into a sharp debate about entitlement and tax reform ahead of the fiscal cliff. That is what you would expect. For the short term, however, I suspect the media and voters will juxtapose the Republicans pre-election confidence that winning the election would be all about rejecting Obama against their post-election position that losing the election had nothing to do with accepting Obama, but that’s not the point I wanted to get at.
The Republican’s characterization of appealing to issues that are important to minorities or left-leaning groups as petty or unimportant strikes me as odious. I think of it in the same vein as Democrat’s expectation that Republicans will hack voting machines or rig elections. But, why? To figure this out, I wanted first to understand the red-side position on the matter.
For that, I turned back to the Conventions. During the Republican National Convention, I remember watching Ms. Romney give a speech about women. What struck me in particular was this part of her speech:
“It’s the moms of this nation — single, married, widowed — who really hold this country together. We’re the mothers, we’re the wives, we’re the grandmothers, we’re the big sisters, we’re the little sisters, we’re the daughters. You know it’s true, don’t you? You’re the ones who always have to do a little more.”
She went on for a moment in this vein, basically pointing out the reality that women tend to have heavier burdens, particularly in managing the family life, than men do. I was surprised, as I expected her next to talk about fixing this labor disparity, or at least acknowledging it was a problem. Instead, she said:
“You are the best of America. You are the hope of America. There would not be an America without you. Tonight, we salute you and sing your praises.”
I was not sure what to think. Did she just pull the 2012 equivalent (to take an extreme example) of a 1800s plantation owner telling his slaves he knows they work really hard without any rights, and then telling them to keep up the good work with a firm pat on the back? Pissed me off at the time.
But, in retrospect, I can actually understand what she was going for. In the rest of Ann’s speech, she discussed how economic issues affect everyone, including women. She was arguing that certain issues affect both Joe Texas AND working mothers, and so, logically, those issues should be the most important ones when an election rolls around. Similarly, the plantation owner might argue that his slaves should care a great deal about the economy, because if he has no money they will have less to eat.
I don’t have a cite handy, but yesterday at least four or five blogs on RedState.com expressed this contrast between “small” issues important to minorities and “large” issues that should be important to everyone. I’ve seen this discussed in the context of Hispanics, especially, when Republicans talk about just needing to get the message out that Hispanics SHOULD care more about economics and religious social issues and therefore vote Republican.
Isn’t that fair? Are right wingers right to complain that campaigning on issues that affect minorities, but not majorities, is somehow the “wrong way” to campaign?
Well, no. I feel like the perception that addressing issues that women / Hispanics / etc care about is “shrill warnings of supposed enemies everywhere” flows from blindness about privilege. (I promise I won’t use that word again, because it’s a buzzword that sends right-wing folks into an apoplectic fit.) That is to say: not being raped, deported, told you who can marry what operations you are allowed to have and not have are not, in and of themselves, issues connected to any minority group. The most ardent Texas Republican does not want to be raped any more than he wants the government to tax his paycheck at 50%. Joe Texas would not vote for someone who campaigned on the slogan, “I want to make it easier for people to put you in a truck and send you to Mexico.”
And yet, if this hypothetical Joe Texas is typical of the right-leaning folks I am reading online, he does not perceive that stopping deportation is an important issue for the country because as a practical matter it does not threaten him. Ditto bans on abortion in cases of rape (or otherwise). Joe Texas simply never has to worry about this in his day-to-day life. It’s the same principle at work when women try to explain that simply being a women means they have to deal with a whole set of expectations and issues that men pass through life blissfully unaware of. He has no real understanding of what it means to live with baggage associated with not being a white male.
So, when a Hispanic voter is worried about an immigration policy that threatens to deport her friends that have lived here as Americans since the age of 3, Joe Texas perceives them as “victims.” Their problems and concerns are not “real.” They’re just the product of skillful politicking, or “community organizing.”
This is not fair and doesnt seem productive. Not being racially profiled by the local police is just as much of a universal desire as having a good economy – it’s just that white male Americans do not have to think about it much, and African American or Hispanic Americans do.
On the flip side, having a good economy is not universal either – the 1% top income earners are doing just fine, thank you very much. What is a “real” issue and what is merely “community organizing” depends entirely on who you happen to be. The right doesn’t need to work on it’s “messaging;” they need to start having empathy for folks who have problems Joe Texas does not share.
TL/DR VERSION / CONCLUSION:
I see a lot more pundits complaining about how issues their constituency sees as important, so called “fundamentals,” did not decide the election, so it doesn’t matter. I wish more people would realize that fundamental is in the eye of the beholder, and painting worries about your family being deported as a scare tactic is insulting (and poor politics).
